Question Changes in Joomla - April 2017

Yes, I don't know what the intent was behind their removal of the Print page option, but its nonetheless gone. Not something I can just toggle a setting and put back in, I'm afraid. My guess is that it was removed because of complications with a new feature that allows for extra data fields to be added, the result of which could make printing erratic. But that's just a guess. All I know is its gone... along with a number of more important front end editing necessities. Like the ability to change category on articles without logging into the backend of the site. I'm hoping some of these things come back in with the next patch... but short of coding them in php myself, there's nothing I can do to get them back locally.

Or you can hold off a couple weeks and see what happens with the CMS code. From what I can see, this is a side effect of an effort Joomla is making to take Bootstrap calls out of the template and put them in the hands of the load of content that requires them... so the code as a whole isn't trapped requiring outdated framework code. Unfortunately, when they moved the bootstrap calls, it looks like they either loaded them too late or unloaded them too early... which is why we're having problems with the email/print options AND likely the category change pull down menu also.

In the meantime, I'm sure you can find a friendly author who will send you the either the code or the wysiwyg editor version.

Actually, you could work straight from the page source without too much hassle you know. You can delete everything from the top of the file down through: div itemprop="articleBody"

and then delete everything after the /div (or, for the few stories that have sub-div's, the next thing following story body is: dl class="article-info muted" )

In between is the story with minimal layout info... other than the image inserts for section divides, the only thing in the body of most of the stories is paragraph marks, with an occasional bold or underline for timestamps, and an italics for emphasis.

Nothing is that stable, I'm afraid. For example, a lot of the problems we're experiencing seem to be the result of a change from an older/outdated code framework (bootstrap 2) that was incorporated in Joomla years ago. Because of 'where' it was incorporated (globally), individual components and third party extensions could just assume it was loaded and not worry about it. But that requires the bootstrap JS to be loaded ALL the time on every page. And it requires a complete rework of the core implementation of the bootstrap code if say, a new version of Bootstrap comes out. Which is has... multiple times.

So now, if they update Bootstrap for the core of Joomla, every component and every extension that is coded reliant on the old one will also have to be reworked. The current crop of project leaders realizes that this is a problem... and have acknowledged that the way to fix it is for Bootstrap not to be a global thing... that a part of the code that needs Bootstrap should load it (in whatever version you need loaded), and then when you're done, unload it.

That's how modular code like Joomla SHOULD work... so its not 'wrong' for them to be moving in that direction. Unfortunately, 'how' the Joomla system gets used by different sites is clearly different from site to site. In our case, we want the entire 'content' side of things to be manipulated here in the front end. while all the site structure and operations are handled in the admin side with limited (safe) access control. But some sites want complete admin control over every word created, with everything done from the back end... requiring even author to log in with restricted accounts. So for any one person to predict all the uses of a given component... well, takes a pretty good programmer. So its not surprising some things are missed. But I wish it were easier to get information and discuss problems on their site. I spend far too much time trying to identify if something is intended or broken and if its already in their list of 'known' issues than I should have to given how much support they have.

And as to finding something else? Well.. to be honest, Joomla isn't the ideal software for what we're trying to do. But then, neither is anything else out there. Not surprising given that what we do is quite unique. If we were bringing in money for the product we are producing, there is a good probability that we would have our online structure custom built... even if it were on a base of Joomla or something else, most of the aspects of things I'm 'making work' would just be reverse engineered and re-coded to do what we want 'how' we want it... instead of just getting as close as possible. But doing that requires more time than I have to commit. Even if I were an expert in PHP, which I'm not.

Yes, that minimizes the times we have to switch categories on an article, which given the system as is... has to be done by an admin in the back end. So, authors will just have to work with all the stuff in various stages of development kept in one pile and i'll move it to the other pile when its ready. Once Joomla updates and code is cleaned up, we'll re-evaluate. Not much point in me spending crazy hours finding more workarounds for something that is going to get re-coded by Joomla in the next few weeks anyway. Would be different if it were an obscure issue, but this one affects a lot of different things.

Oh, Joomla tests. But remember, its an open source project. So no one is 'paid' to test... or code. the people who get paid are the ones writing the best extensions that solve problems with features that everyone needs but Joomla's core software just doesn't do.

Also, in theory, I should be running a second copy of the site on a private box and applying updates to that before applying them to the site. That way I could identify any such problems before they impact the site. Of course, I don't have an IT department / infrastructure for regular patch application and testing or the budget to run a second server or maintain the paid software/extensions that I've implemented. So... its not 'all' Joomla's fault. Some of it is simply practicality and choices.

*cringes*

Ya... hmm... I suspect its still missing from some/many of the stories. But it is interesting that it seems to be working on the new one.

Patching for bug fixes, to hopefully correct some of the crap that they broke with the last one.

That's something else.

Given that the JCE editor that I'd been recommending to everyone because of its scope of options has decided it no longer wants to load in its entirety (even for me, as superuser) in the front end... I loaded another fairly powerful editor as an option in addition to TinyMCE (which is the Joomla default) and CodeMirror (which is fine if you want a code side editor, but doesn't do wysiwyg).

ARKeditor allows for some 'inline' editing... in other words, you're reading a story, you see a typo, you click on the pull out pencil and then you edit the story right there in reading mode. You then click save and it applies your inline changes to the article. Of course, in order to use it, you have to have editorial access for the story you want to make edits on.... but its a convenient tool for those of us doing a read through for feedback, as we should be able to clean up basic typo and spelling sort of mistakes on the fly.

If the inline editor lets you do something you don't think you should be able to do, let me know please. Or doesn't let you do something you think you should be able to, also.

The TAG change is because we've now got a tag system that allows for complex filtering and search use... and doesn't require ME to create new tags in the admin side before they can be used. It also allows for some bulk creation of tags through importing a CSV file... so I went to the WIKI codename table and grabbed the 500 or so students sorted by codename from that list in openoffice spreadsheet, saved just the codename column as a csv file and imported all the tags at once. I also added all the canon authors. Obviously, that's far from everything... and some people will want arc/storyline tags, and tags by first names or full names. But again, authors can add them on the fly, so what I created is just a starting point.

The downside is, we have to put the tags in all the stories. Even the ones that already had tags from the Joomla core tag system. It doesn't take long, but there are a lot of stories... so its a bit of a project that we'll be working on.

I swear Malady... if you stumbled across a button on the site that said "Push this to permanently crash the Whateley site and cost the authors ten thousand dollars to repair things".... would you post a public friggen message asking about if we meant to put it there?

And then, when you found the post explaining it to ALL the people who were shown the button that asked them NOT to talk about... would you post ANOTHER public message asking if we meant to tell you about it? And what have I told you about LINKING to parts of the site that are access controlled?

Good thing this wasn't a test to decide who can be trusted with WhatIF author status, hmm?

Do you realize, Malady, that even now... you are STILL the only person who is saying anything about it in a public thread?

Hehe. No, that's because I've implemented a new tags system that is very powerful. And the new tags cloud that goes with it only looks for stories/authors with the new tags. Since I'm using the Library as my practice/test zone for working with the new content layouts and everything... the only tags I've actually actively updated so far are the Caregiver ones.

If you check out the library, you'll be able to see some of that as I work on it. Once I get everything working the way I want it to; I'll implement the same stuff for the canon collections and WhatIF stories.

I actually prefer the core Joomla tabled lists... but they aren't usable with the new system. I don't understand the logic of improving on something to give more options... while taking away the ones that were already in place. I want to use the original tables and EXPAND on them... not roll back and reinvent the wheel.

You're referring to the Columned listing Layout, btw?

If you go into the Caregivers section and click on the Search bar, it will expand the search and filters system. At the bottom of that is a drop down that lets you choose between any of the five currently installed layouts. I haven't spend time tweaking/cleaning up all five... but I have spent a little time with both the Columned one (which looks similar to blog style) and the Tabs one. I'll be working on the other three as time allows.